Ignazio is about to marry Carla, whose dowry is to be paid by Carlo, who adopted her when she became an orphan. But Carlo's financial troubles force him to ask Ignazio for a delay, in exchange offering generous monthly payments in interest. Ignazio refuses. Carlo is so incensed that he suggests to Carla to forget him, but she does not want to. They marry. One day, Carla wishes to fire a female servant. Ignazio suspiciously opposes it. But when she confronts him a second time, he yields, having greater troubles on his mind: imminent bankruptcy unless he obtains a loan. Ignazio asks his Uncle Marco for one, but he refuses. He next asks Carlo, though lying about the reason for it, a jewel sale liable to make money for both of them. Carla is surprised at her husband's lie but keeps silent. The result is that Carlo never gets his money back. More financial troubles force Ignazio to plan escaping his creditors by leaving the city, but not with his wife, with her friend, Elena. Carlo learns that other people have borrowed from Ignazio, namely Elena's husband as well as Marco, based on his falsified signature. Moreover, Marco informs him that Ignazio and Carla have moved away no one knows where. Marco threatens to inform the police about the forgery, though Carlo disapproves. Carla is not with her husband, for her is on his own the better to hide himself. She admits to Carlo's wife she has kept silent about her husband's shady dealings, to Carlo's detriment, but despite all she would receive him back "with joy". In desperate straits, Ignazio surreptiously enters Carlo's house in the hope of hiding there. Marco tells Carlo he has not gone through with his threat, but is worried about not knowing where he is. Elena is all the more so. She tells Carla Ignazio borrowed expensive jewels from her and she does not know where he is. Carla eventually discovers her husband inside the house, who proposes that they should leave the city together with some money he has managed to obtain. They are interrupted by Elena's return, frantic about her jewels. Carla understands the nature of their relation and leaves silently. Ignazio gives back her jewels. When Carlo enters, Carla can no longer restrain her resentment towards her husband, admitting her guilt in keeping silent all this time. Ignazio offers Carlo half his money as compensation for what he owes him. Carlo hesitates, but Carla takes the money for his sake. They next learn that Marco has gone through with his threat after all, as police officers enter the house. Ignazio escapes them by climbing through the roof, but, to the grief of all, slips and falls to his death.

Giovanni Verga showed that chivalry exists in rustic circumstances but leads to tragedy

Banna, a blind woman, takes pleasure in touching Bianca Maria's hair, letting it fall all over her. "It is a torrent." she says. "It covers you all over. It falls to the very ground. It covers me too. What floods! What floods! It has a perfume, it has a thousand perfumes. A torrent full of flowers! Ah, you are altogether beautiful, you have every gift. How could you renounce one who loved you? How could you remain in the shadow, you who are made to give joy? Some part of you slept in darkness which has awakened now. You know yourself now; is it not true? I have listened to your step, sometimes. You moved as if you followed in yourself a melody you knew. Ah, if I could tell you the word of happiness, Bianca Maria!" Bianca Maria weeps at this. Anna pretends to her husband, Alessandro, that it is because she had been reading Sophocles' "Antigone". Bianca Maria's brother, Leonardo, arrives with joyful news on the success of his excavations: "The gold, the gold...the bodies... great heaps of gold...bodies all covered with gold," he exclaims. Alessandro also loves Bianca Maria. "When I look at you, when I hear the rhythm of your breathing, I feel that there are other beautiful things to unveil, other good things to conquer, and that there are perhaps in the world things to be done, as delightful as the most beautiful dreams of poetry." he says. But when he takes her hands, she turns away from him. Anna arrives and asks to be kissed. Bianca Maria kisses her on the mouth. Alone with Alessandro, Leonardo reveals his excavations seemed to have poisoned him. Moreover, he is troubled about Bianca Maria. "She has been the perfume of my life, the repose and the freshness, the counsel and the comfort, and the dream, and the poetry, and all," he says. Looking at "her little naked feet held out to the heat", he is overcome with repugnance by a "muddy thought". At this revelation, Alessandro staggers out, then comes back and touches his head. Alone with Leonardo, Anna grows disconselate. "I no longer belong to the beautiful and cruel life, I am an obstacle in the way, a lifeless obstacle against which so much hope and force break and shatter," she says. How can her husband help loving Bianca Maria? Alone with Bianca Maria, Leonardo knows she loves Alessando. "I vowed myself yours when we were left alone in the world; I will live in the future only for you. Tell me what we shall do. I am ready," she answers. They go out hurriedly, not answering Anna's call. When Alessandro asks his wife what she knows of Leonardo's horrible secret, she answers: "Only silence is worthy of us." In despair of their future, Leonardo drowns his sister in a public fountain "to save her soul from the horror about to seize on it", after which he feels much better. "I have become pure, quite pure," he affirms. As he and Alessandro lift the corpse, Anna calls out for her. They stand rigid with terror. She stoops over the corpse, touches it, and utters a piercing shriek as her sight is restored.

In the wake of financial ruin in Milan, Giovanni accepts a poor-paying offer of employment in Geneva from his nephew, Massimo. He will bring his wife, Giulia, and his two children from a previous marriage, Tommaso and Nennele, along with him. He is worried about his wife's state of mind in the crisis: "She brought a lawyer into the house to persuade me to defraud my creditors," Giovanni informs Massimo. She has also sold items illegally. At the last minute, she attempted to go off without paying her dressmaker, but was caught in time. In Geneva, a listless Tommaso comments sarcastically about his step-mother's main occupation: painting landscapes, or "maligning nature with her misguided paint-brush". To make ends meet, Nennele gives private English lessons in French. Massimo tries to encourage her, but not Tommaso, who quit a job offered by Massimo "as foreman of a bunch of laborers boring holes in an ice-covered mountain". Having lost all his money at gambling, Tommaso asks Giulia for some. She yields him part his request, specifying: "If you win, you must give me half." When offered a post as secretary to a sawmill owner, Tommaso at first refuses, but then accepts in view of his father's depressive spirits. Later, Giulia asks for the key to a drawer containing the household money, but Nennele, as a prudent household manager, refuses. Frustrated, Giulia appeals to her husband, who informs his daughter she is to be the household manager. Giulia has managed to sell two pictures, but this was achieved at the expense of her artist-friend, Helmer, who suspiciously invites her to his house. Nennele discovers that her step-mother has stolen her silver frame, but Tommaso declines to cooperate with her story, Giulia striding off vindicated. Frustrated about the poor manner in which the family has adapted to the dreary conditions, Nennele asks Massimo whether he feels rebellious. "Do you rebel against leaves scattered in the wind?" Massimo asks back. Though seemingly at work for weeks, Tommaso stayed for only a single day, Massimo discovers. "I give myself up to the current," admits Tommaso. He owes a great deal of money to a woman and will pay her back by marrying her. Seeing Nennele disheartened at these events, Massimo asks her to marry him, but she refuses, convinced the offer originates from charity, not love. That night, Giovanni discovers Nennele about to go out and guesses she meant to commit suicide. As they talk, Giovanni seems to notice a man lurking in the shade of the hedge. Nennele sees him, too. "He stayed," affirms Nennele, overjoyed. "He stayed for me. He understood."